This stunning Versailles-inspired mansion is located at 141249 Canyon Vine Cove in Draper, Utah. It was built by Lane Myers Construction for David Loeffler, an entertainment mogul. David earned his fortune as an entertainment industry manager and tour promoter. His roster of clients include Justin Bieber, Usher and Lionel Richie. The 20,000 square foot home was part of the Salt Lake Parade of Homes and features 8 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, 2-story foyer with grand staircase, formal living and dining rooms, piano room, step-down ballroom, gourmet kitchen, family room, craft room, home office, in-law suite with full kitchen, home theater with concession stand and more.

Revolting, although not quite as bad as that huge house on a Wisconsin lake that literally looked like a cross between Versailles and a Motel 8. This is close to that, though. If you’re going to go with an ultra-pretentious Baroque style like this as your “base note”, you really have to be careful. And almost none of the so-called architects who design these homes are.

Where to begin? Firstly there’s just the fact that there are too many trifling things going on with the facade. It’s inverse gestalt – far less than the sum of its parts. Why do the balcony styles have to vary from metal to stone? Why does the window spacing have to have a odd break? Why does every window have to have a down light? Why do the roofing profiles have to be asymmetric? Why does the facade have to curve in an awkward and ambiguous way? It’s ludicrous. It’s like these architects are paid for every deviance from neoclassic elegance and proportion that they can dream up. And btw, garages facing forward screams cheap, even if they are partly concealed. Le Notre, if we dug him up, would wonder why the owner had planted a veritable botanical garden in front of the house, which already distracts from the facade (which frankly, might be a good thing) and will almost completely cover it when all that crap grows up. (Those Colorado Blue Spruces will get huge.) Oh, I nearly forget the use of cheap manufactured interlocking stone instead of natural stone or at least real “mortar masonry” for those retaining walls. Cheap cheap cheap. It looks the fortifications to protect a third world dictator’s dacha from car bombs.

I don’t get as worked up about interiors, but why does the elaborate Baroque chandelier hang from some bizarre modernist negative-space medallion? I could go on but why bother; I’d view this place out of the corner of my eye while driving by at 35 mph and be able to determine in 2 seconds that the people living there had no taste and were new money.

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ZigZagBoom

I can’t help but add that everything about the proportions are wrong. It looks like a real French manor house that’s being incorrectly displayed – fattened – onto a widescreen TV from a 4:3 source. To have such dormers, the roof line should be much steeper. They look ridiculous. Constrained to such proportions, an authentic neo-Baroque architect would have used those little eyelet/rondel dormers. (not sure what they are really called, but easy enough to see all over France. ) But of course, your typical el-cheapo American carpenters would have been completely flummoxed with such an assignment, so even if the architect had known to specify them, he wouldn’t have gotten very far with them.

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mak

I don’t think there is anything to add to comment on this house, Zig Zag Boom has destroyed it it quite nicely.

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Chance

Not amazing, but not bad. Better than 75% of the houses we see.

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Chris

Agreed with Chance.

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Daniel

Inspired by the manor much? My biggest problem with the front are the black entrance steps leading to the home – incredibly distracting and the look downright dirty. The stonework is also a little Disneyesque looking. Interior looks very generic, almost as if they couldn’t top the exterior. At least they didn’t use a double bridal staircase. Overall, the interior would be at home in some newly built manor outside of London.

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Tony

I agree Dan, I think it looks like they copied off The Spelling Manor or The Manor or whatever it was called lol. I agree about the Disneyesque comment too. I think some homes look like they are trying to go for this castle look but they fall short and look like some cheap faux castle like something Disney would make lol. I think that the actual Spelling Manor was able to pull off the double stair-case look though.

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Grrrowler

The front facing garage doors completely kill any hope for the façade. With such an apparently large budget to work with, you’d think an architect could have come up with a way to hide the garages. “Chance” nicely sums up what I think about the rest of the exterior.

As for the interior, there are some really awkwardly-shaped rooms in there. Whoever laid out the floor plans seems to have no concept of classical proportions for rooms. Many of them are way too narrow and way too long that they look almost impractical. Maybe that’s a result of the camera lens being used, but if that’s the case, it’s time for a new photographer. The finishes look downright embarrassing for a house of this scale; generic mouldings, no ceiling treatments in most rooms, stock floors, and average quality cabinetry seem to be what was spec’ed for the interiors. As for the décor, if I were looking through the pictures without any idea of the house they were from, I’d think they were all of a new-build suburban tract house. Some of the rooms are larger than average, but there is nothing special about any of them. The furnishings barely rate as “staging” and are so common as to be boring. It is so bland and so boring that the interior could easily be from a 2,500 square foot builder’s model house. At least it does have one of those theater concession stands that I love so much in private houses.

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Grrrowler

I actually meant that ZigZag summed up the exterior for me. Ooops

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LGCS

Outside is pretty blah. It’s not offensive as some of the homes we see here just nothing special and not a good design.

The interior actually isn’t bad. I like it

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Nic

I am normally a voyeur here so I don’t comment. But in light of the post about cast-stone products, I finally understand why I dislike a lot of these homes. Prior to that post, I would just look at house like this one and say something seems off, but not be able to articulate it. The problem aside from the dreadful design is cast stone.

The other problem is these so-called high budgets. I have to respectfully disagree with growler, I don’t believe the budget was high hence the cheaper materials. When I see a gigantic house + an unknown town that = a sub par behemoth. I’m no realtor but wouldn’t a smaller (5-10,000) square foot, better thought out home in Park City or Salt Lake City have been a better investment?

And while I’m on my first rant, I’d like to add that I wish more people would take a few risks with their interiors. Why spend more money on a custom home, if you don’t use bespoke or architectural salvaged materials the way the wealthy did in the past to add to the home’s character? I know resale value factors a lot into today’s design, but not only does that home look like as Daniel says: a newly built manor outside of London, but the walls look very similar to the entry of the home on this blog from Alpine, NJ. I just don’t believe every person in America has the same taste we see reflected in all of these cookie-cutter mansions.

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Mak

Oh man.. did anyone actually look at it on a map? You drive through this mega-development of super low budget tract housing surrounding a mormon church( er..temple) and reach the road to the richy rich neighborhood of maybe 15 supersize houses. They all look down on the hundreds of identical houses. I think it’s creepy as hell.

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Nic

I hoped you were exaggerating about the look of the homes…you were NOT! It is really bad. Here’s a link to Fox News. Mr. Loeffler was interviewed by their station after participating in the parade of homes.

Like the Siegels of the Windermere, FL Versailles, he’s not shy at all.

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Daniel

Holy guacamole. You weren’t kidding about the Mormon temple. It’s as if they have that in lieu of a clubhouse. I guess it isn’t a problem if you’re considering living in this community as I’m assuming the vast majority of residents are Mormons. It’d be like complaining about the temples in Kiryas Joel.

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george

You know Kiryas Joel? I live in Sullivan county N.Y. The center of the original “Borsht Belt”. ……..Who Knew.

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Daniel

I know of it. Saw a documentary on it on YouTube. Fascinating to see how other cultures live in our society. I was also amazed to learn that out of all the poverty stricken areas in our country, a small hamlet an hour from Manhattan takes the cake.

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Ted

the exterior is ok. i hate the steps leading up to the entrance. I LOVE THE INTERIOR THOUGH. finally a large manor home with and updated interior.

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Tony

This is such a Spelling Manor copy-cat but way cheaper quality. The exterior doesn’t look like real limestone like The Manor, it looks like cement block or something. This is a big ole cheap pile of crap.

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Sam

OH MY HOLY NELLY FURTADO! This is amazing!, although it looks really similar to Candy Spellings old home in Beverly Hills. Which there were some more outdoor pictures of the landscaping, I like the fact is quite open but a little too overpowering

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ZigZagBoom

OMG I’ve gotten into the googles. Let’s name this place the “Palace of Doucheville”. (remember it’s pronounced douche-veeeel.) This guy makes your average NFL quarterback seem like a member of the British peerage.

These idiots always build their eyesores right on the road on a cul-de-sac next to a bunch of unifinsished tract homes in the middle of no where. If you’re going to build a “mansion” like this, in a location like this. Make an investment and buy some land first… not A LOT.

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NOVA Ben

Fuck this.

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tony

Don’t you guys get it yet? These people don’t care. This guys a hot shot who works with usher, not someone who visits homesoftherich.com every day. I guarantee you it doesn’t mean shit to him that there is an odd break in the window spacing or that the roof profiles are asymmetric. He cares that it is 20,000 sq ft. But its surrounded by small homes…that’s what he wants. He has the biggest house on the block and knows that everyone sees it and everyone cares and everyone is curious who owns it. And when he meets his neighbors he can say that he works with Usher and feel like a bad-ass. He could not begin to think what a deviation from neoclassic elegance even is.

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marc22

The first thing you see as you enter the grand foyer and look up the stairs and through the large triple windows is a hideous and massive gray stone retaining wall?

Enough said.

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Brian

Good call, I missed that one. Sure the whole mess is a train wreck. But maybe he only spent $2-3 mil on it.

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ZigZagBoom

Tony, not sure what you point is. In fact, your statement constitutes a kind of tautology. (And, yes, I’m sure he has no idea what that is either.) Of course the people who buy these houses have no taste. That’s why they buy them. We KNOW they don’t care! Doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to point out how hideous and tasteless such houses sometimes are, and/or the banality of the lives of some of the people who own them. (I think a lot of things about this owner screams “reaction formation”, but you notice I didn’t initially go that far in my 2nd post above. I went too far as it was though…the interview screams for itself.)
BTW I’m not jealous if that’s what you’re thinking. My house is not a “mansion” but it was once featured in a national design magazine, and would be considered more architecturally successful than many of the houses featured here. I have had a life long interest in architecture and considered becoming an architect. This is my version of, say, visiting those websites that used to lampoon “rice rockets”. And I do find a few of the houses to be pleasant aesthetic fodder, like the Florida mansion #1 in the post below. It’s a relief to know there are a few architects out there who treat historical styles with the respect they deserve, unlike this trash.

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Lonnie

It has potential!

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Sam

it looks like many people beat me to it, but I was going to say as well that the front facade looks like the spelling manor. The only difference between the two houses is that The Manor actually looks nice and this one looks like a fancied-up office building.

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Andrea

I walked through this during the SLC Home show. The house is on a street with about 15 other mcmansions. And I am not exaggerating when I say that ALL of the homes are either for sale, or abondoned or being foreclosed on. The house directly next to this one, which is ENORMOUS, has been in the construction phase for years…and appears to be abondoned.

As for the house…not impressive. Not at all. It’s boring and fugly and has no yard which backs up onto a retaining wall. And the owner is a total tool.

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lambskin

Location, Location, Location!

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Kyle

Horrible home, and very very bland and cold. Don’t know how anyone could live in it.

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Jeff P.

All I want to know is, what kind of “entertainment mogul” lives in Utah? Did he come up with those animated Christian singing vegetables or something?

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Craig

To all of the design snobs who posted on here, and that IS what you are, a bunch of envious snobs, you know nothing of the man who owns this home or WHY it was designed and built the way it was. Such a shame…….you judge a home merely on how it looks much like I am sure you judge people, on how they dress, the car they drive or the color of their skin.

This home is absolutely massive in person. Such beautiful, impressive architecture. As a Realtor in Salt Lake City I have shown nearby homes to potential buyers. When they see this home, they almost always want the whole story about it.

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